ERROR : Authentication Ticket Mismatched

[#1]

Time: 19:00 - 12th October 2016

Browser: Firefox 49.0

I was replying to a post, and toggling from the [HTML] to [Preview] tab.

The [Preview] tab hung and showed a small ring of dots instead of text as shown below.

Continuing, I was able to edit in both [HTML] and [Rich Text] tabs, but [Preview] was still hung.

Pressing [Post] crashed with an " ! Oops - Authentication Ticket Mismatched, failed authentication."

Fortunately I had a copy of the HTML in a separate text editor, so I didn't lose my work.

Why the hell hasn't @jaread83 fixed these errors ?, has NOTHING been fixed in that last six months !.

[#2]

Not sure what gave you the impression that it is me that can fix this. I am a front end developer and the software side of things is all with Lithium, not me. I can't even get access to the backend code!

I will raise a support ticket with Lithium and see if this can be looked at from their side.

[#3]

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@jaread83 wrote:

I will raise a support ticket with Lithium and see if this can be looked at from their side.

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This seems a bit futile @jaread83?   Lithium haven't fixed many of the bugs reported months ago including IIRC the one reported here.

[#4]

@jaread83, if you are unable to fix ANY of the hundreds of reported errors with this disgraceful excuse for a forum, please tell us the forum name of the person in charge of this project, so that I can re-report the dozens of faults that I spent hundreds of hours documenting, which you and others have not done anything about.

I really can't conceive what the hell the Plusnet web developers actually do.  You have had literally hundreds of faults reported to you, most of these being at least six months ago, and absolutely NOTHING has been fixed.  How is it even possible to work on a project team, where there is no fault fixing, feedback from customers is entirely ignored, no progress is made, and you continue to use code which doesn't work and you claim have no control over. WTF ?

It is ludicrous that this time last year we had a popular and working forum, where there was considerable customer co-operation and dedication in solving other customers faults, and a good level of banter.  Six months later Plusnet unilaterally destroyed the forum functionality, claim that it was all perfect 'in staging', claim it's all Lithium's fault, and now another six months later we are no further forwards.

It is intolerable to STILL be waiting 11 to 22 seconds for forum pages to load, the rich text editor is still unusable, I still have to edit my posts in a plain text editor as HTML and then paste that text into the HTML editor because the forum editor crashes so often that I frequently lose everything that I type.

How is it possible, for YOU to work on a team where the project is so broken that it is barely usable, and due to incompetence your team have lost the goodwill of nearly all the long time members who have nearly all abandoned helping out as they used to - just because you can't be bothered to escalate reported issues AND ensure those problems get fixed.

If Lithium are not providing any fault fixing, then why hasn't your team demanded of your management, that you either need to take control of their code, or change suppliers ?.  It is simply not acceptable to say that you can't do anything, you are on the team, therefore you have a responsibly to ensure that whoever is in charge of maintaining this forum, is aware that this forum is broken and it needs to be fixed - before we (your customers) finally abandon this sinking ship.

[#5]

I recognise you're frustrated but...

I'm going to stick my head above the parapet and say the criticism of @jaread83 is unwarranted here.

22 second loads are not typical of mine nor many others' experience. The forum remains absolutely useable to me, more so from mobile devices.

Yes, some stuff was more palatable with the old implementation, but let's not forget that Jack has made myriad improvements to things round these parts.

It's disappointing that this seems to have gone unnoticed.

[#6]

So who is responsible for all the unresolved issues with this forum ?

and when are they going to start addressing any of the problems which I reported six months ago ?

As for criticising @jaread83, there have been many issues he said he was committed to looking into, which never got resolved, or even a later reply.  If you can't get something fixed, then ensure it gets handed to someone who can do something, don't just silently add the latest issue to the pile of things which you hope people will forget about !.

It seems that forum members have given up reporting forum related issues - because NOTHING is getting fixed, and we are simply wasting our time, as Plusnet are taking no responsibility for anything.

Many members are silently disappearing and no longer contributing to this forum because Plusnet seem to no longer care - and therefore why should we care about helping out other customers, when Plusnet clearly doesn't value our contribution ?.

Have you noticed how many of the original forum members from 2007 (and the previous F9 forum), have stopped posting in the last few months ?.  It's because the forum is now such a pain to use, that it is dying a slow death, as the long time experienced members find better things to do with their time, rather than waste their efforts being unappreciated here.

Can I just ask 'OldJim' to switch off the lights, when he's the last one to leave.

Moderator's note by Adie (Dvorak) removed derogatory comment about a PN staff member]

[#7]

I'm going to throw this out there, but is anyone else seeing load times of 20+ seconds.

I agree with Bob here, Jack has worked incredibly hard on this and replies to posts regularly (even though he really doesn't have to reply).

[#8]

@Anonymous,

While I do not appreciate the name calling and personal attack I will at least try to answer what I think is going on.

The error you saw is the result of your connection changing in some way while the community keeps a connection to its servers to authenticate you. This is required for the popup messages when you get a notification as well as making sure you are authenticated as the owner of the account. The reason you got an authentication error is becuase the community had detected that your connection had changed in some way. I have heard you have your connection sitting behind a proxy (or two)? It may be possible that this is what is causing this particular error.

Unfortunately, this isn't something I can personally fix as this is down to how you have set up your network and how it communicates with the Lithium servers. Never the less, I have asked Lithium to investigate anyway and I will see what they can find out.

[#9]

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@Chris wrote:

I'm going to throw this out there, but is anyone else seeing load times of 20+ seconds.

I'm not seeing 20+ secs  - but 10 secs is fairly common.

M

[#10]

I've just had the exact same "Authentication Ticket Mismatched" error.

  Different browser, on a different OS, on a different computer, on a different network.

Oh hang on, it's the same broken forum though ! - which still isn't working after more than six months !

Just lost all my work again, great job Lithium,  but I'm sure @jaread83 will have it fixed soon .

Hmmm, I wonder what the answer will be this time ?

1. Blame the customer's equipment ?
2. Blame the customer's technical skills ?
3. Blame Lithium for hiding all their code and documentation ?
4. Blame not being given enough time on the project ?
5. Blame Openreach for not upgrading my exchange since 2006 ?
6. Blame browser for not being exactly v47.666.666 which Lithium use for development.

I'm sure somebody said that none of these problems happened when this forum was on 'staging',  or maybe I'm just imagining things now,  after all authentication errors shouldn't still be happening after SIX MONTHS !

I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to report this error, as it will only end up in the Plusnet black hole of things that will never be investigated.

[#11]

And another thing 

It is now 01:00 in the morning, and I'm getting forum page loads well over twenty seconds, what's going on ?

Are any members of the forum design team awake, to look at Lithium server status right now ?

This is DEFINITELY not my computer, or my router, or my broadband connection, my exchange isn't congested,  I have just tested everything and my extensive network telemetry is showing that these delays are nothing to do with me !.

Who am I kidding, I'm just wasting my time AGAIN reporting a problem which I will get told only affects me. 

[#12]

It's 01:30 and forum pages are loading in around 5 or 6 seconds which is about average for most forum pages on my connection.

[#13]

Thanks @Mav for the sanity check.

I'm now looking at a variety of methods for capturing weird page loading hangups as shown below.

In this particular instance the page took 19.879 seconds to complete, and all I did was choose a random forum page to view. 

On further inspection of information relating to this trace, it is immediately apparent that the https code has not been optimised in any way, and therefore it is not surprising that I see excessive load times on my near perfect but relatively slow 20CN connection. 

It is only Plusnet web pages that give me any problems, but looking how their https is performing, I'm not surprised.  It looks like the code has been hastily cobbled together, not tested using any code analysis tools, not tested with any network path simulation tools, and because it seems to work on the majority of their fast connections, then it is easy for Plusnet to simply blame the customer's equipment when anyone tries to report that anything is wrong.